Bastien’s
post set off a chain of memories for me today. I saw Soy Cuba a couple years
ago at the library, and loved it. Once you get past the propaganda,
and some of the goofy characterizations (the portrayal of Americans is
particularly funny), you begin to realize what an interesting piece it
truly is. There’s a scene in a bar where the camera work is just
poetic.

And of course it was co-written by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. I saw him
once in Pasadena. He and the American translator of his work co-read
The
City of Yes and the City of No, the translator in English and
Yevtushenko in Russian. We all assumed he was drunk, but perhaps he
was just dramatic, dancing about maniacally while his translator read
in English like an automaton.

That evening he also screened his film Stalin’s Funeral, which
was pretty wonderful, as I recall (this was more than ten years ago).
There’s a scene where a prisoner practices piano on the edge of table
in prison; he told us that this was a true story and that the real
prisoner, a concert pianist, maintained his training this way and gave
a concert the week after he was let out.

I’ve also been thinking today about the transience of things, and
the difficulty, even pain, of letting go. You’d think after all these
years, and all the various projects I’ve worked on and left, that it
would be easy. Nevertheless, despite my awareness (however vague) of
this process, I find I put a part of myself into whatever I work on,
and pulling it out again hurts.